[Proposed] Accessibility Guidelines Working Group Charter

This is a proposed updated charter for the Accessibility Guidelines (formerly Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) Working Group. It is under review by the Advisory Committee (Member-only link). AC comments on this proposed charter may be sent to member-charters-review@w3.org; other comments may be sent to wai-wcag-editor@w3.org.

The mission of the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AG WG) is to develop guidelines to make content on the Web accessible for people with disabilities and to participate in the development and maintainance of implementation support materials for the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Join the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group.

Start date
End date	31 October 2019
Chairs	Andrew Kirkpatrick, Joshue O Connor
Team Contacts	Michael Cooper (0.45 FTE) Shadi Abou-Zahra (0.3 FTE) TBD (.35 FTE)
Meeting Schedule	Teleconferences: Weekly Face-to-face: we will meet during the W3C's annual Technical Plenary week; additional face-to-face meetings may be scheduled by consent of the participants, no more than 3 per year.

Background

The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group is being chartered as an early update to the existing Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group charter. As indicated in the current charter, the Working Group has been developing new work in the areas of mobile accessibility, low vision accessibility, and cognitive accessibility. While it has proved useful to be developing proposals for new criteria in focused task forces, following additional discussion in the AG WG and W3C member company and public feedback, we believe that it will be more beneficial to develop these as combined normative guidance in Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1. Specifically, the group has received feedback that the existence of multiple separate normative specifications (as extensions) risks deharmonization of global accessibility guidelines and increases the likelihood of conflicts between these separate documents. As a result, the Working Group is now seeking to recharter in order to produce a WCAG 2.1 Recommendation.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 document will incorporate updated guidance to better address topics including low-vision and cognitive disabilities and to incorporate guidance to support mobile use cases and touch interfaces. The Working Group has conducted research and initial development for these topics in task forces and expects to reach FPWD in February 2017.

The WCAG 2.1 update will be an incremental update to WCAG 2.0 rather than a major revision. The requirements for WCAG 2.1 are designed to build on the WCAG 2.0 requirements to ensure testability and technology independence, and will also ensure backward compatibility with WCAG 2.0. As with WCAG 2.0 in the past, the Working Group will periodically conduct reviews and provide feedback on WCAG 2.1 support materials created by other groups to help ensure that resources reflect the intent of the specification.

In addition to WCAG 2.1, and as a result of the research conducted in the various task forces and the experiences working with WCAG 2.0 for several years, a substantial evolution of WCAG is also needed to better integrate guidance for content and user agents, and to address authoring tool requirements as an essential part of the process for delivering accessible information. With the closure of the User Agent and Authoring Tools Working Groups in the past year, many participants of these groups have joined the current WCAG Working Group in order to participate in the various task forces and have made the need for a major update clear. The requirements for the next major version will be defined in parallel with (and are substantially informed by) the development of WCAG 2.1.

The Working Group intends to produce updated guidance for accessibility on a regular interval of approximately three years, starting with WCAG 2.1. Depending on the outcome of the requirements development for the next major update to WCAG, it may be necessary to pursue further dot-releases of WCAG until the major release is ready to be completed in time for a scheduled release date.

Improving support for testing WCAG is an important priority for the Working Group. The AG WG has an Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) Task Force which is developing a framework and repository of test rules to promote a unified interpretation of WCAG among different web accessibility test tools. The proposed recommendation-track framework will be generic enough to meet the needs of WCAG 2.0 but not exclude other standards, including WCAG 2.1. The framework will also allow the development of custom test rules to meet company requirements and best practices. This includes test rules for fully automated and semi-automated conformance testing in different web technologies, such as HTML, CSS, and WAI-ARIA. While this framework will add a layer of implemention for tool developers, it provides more consistency and comparability of the resulting test rules.

Scope

The group will:

Support the application of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines to mobile and touch devices through the development of Normative updates to WCAG 2.0, as well as adding improvements to better support users with low vision and cognitive, language, and learning impairments.
Develop a framework and repository of test rules, to promote a unified interpretation of WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 among different web accessibility test tools
Develop requirements for a major update to WCAG which may include the incorporation of user agent and authoring tool requirements.
Continue development of non-normative documents to support implementation of accessibility guidelines.

Out of Scope

The following features are out of scope, and will not be addressed by this Working group.

The AG WG is not required to be the central repository for accessibility support data.
The AG WG does not perform conformance evaluations and reviews.

Success Criteria

The group will be considered successful if it produces stable versions of specifications addressing the work items listed in the Milestones section, with normative conformance requirements for implementation.

Deliverables

A detailed plan to achieve these milestones along with updates to the timeline is documented in the AG WG Project Management Plan.

Normative Specifications

The Working Group will deliver the following W3C normative specifications:

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1: This specification defines updated guidelines to make web content accessible to people with disabilities, updating WCAG 2.0 with additional guidance to better address needs for users with low vision and cognitive disabilities, and users of touch and mobile interfaces.
Accessibility Conformance Testing Framework 1.0: This specification defines the format, logic, and implementation of accessibility test rules.
Accessibility Guidelines 3.0 (FPWD): First Public Working Draft of a major version update of guidance for accessibility. This version is expected to include substantial changes, including the incorporation of guidance for user agents and authoring tools.

Other Deliverables

Other non-normative documents may be created such as:

Working Group Notes to support understanding and interpretation of other deliverables as the need arises (Note)
Semi-annual updates of Understanding WCAG 2.0, to be published as a W3C Working Group Note or as a curated resource of the Working Group (Note)
Semi-annual updates of Understanding WCAG 2.1, to be published as a W3C Working Group Note or as a curated resource of the Working Group (Note)
Semi-annual updates of Techniques for WCAG 2, to be published as a W3C Working Group Note or as a curated resource of the Working Group (Note). The Techniques document will be a resource that covers WCAG 2.0 and 2.1 together, unlike the Understanding documents, which are separate documents for WCAG 2.0 and 2.1.
Requirements for Accessibility Guidelines 3.0 (Note).
Working Group Notes supporting the Accessibility Conformance Testing Framework 1.0, such as the Benchmarking Method (Note)
Errata for WCAG 2.1.

Milestones

February 2017: FPWD for WCAG 2.1
January 2018: CR for WCAG 2.1
January 2018: FPWD for ACTF 1.0
March 2018: Requirements for Accessibility Guidelines 3.0 (Note)
June 2018: WCAG 2.1 Recommendation
October 2018: CR for ACTF 1.0
October 2019: FPWD for Accessibility Guidelines 3.0
October 2019: ACTF 1.0 Recommendation

Coordination

For all specifications, this Working Group will seek horizontal review for accessibility, internationalization, performance, privacy, and security with the relevant Working and Interest Groups, and with the TAG. Invitation for review must be issued during each major standards-track document transition, including FPWD and CR, and should be issued when major changes occur in a specification.

Additional technical coordination with the following Groups will be made, per the W3C Process Document:

W3C Groups

Accessible Platform Architectures Working Group: Provide input into other W3C groups on accessibility requirements.
ARIA Working Group: Review and help develop WCAG 2.0 Techniques for WAI-ARIA.
Cascading Style Sheets Working Group: Advise on WAG conformance interpretations of CSS features.
Education and Outreach Working Group: Coordinate on making WCAG 2.0 usable by a wider audience, on developing or reviewing strategies and materials to increase awareness and to educate Web community about WCAG 2.0, ensure WCAG 2.0 uses terms from WAI Glossary properly.
Internationalization Activity: Ensure that references to internationalization techniques are correct, and to ensure that language can be translated successfully.
Mobile Web Initiative: Explore relationship between Mobile Web best practices and WCAG 2.0, and applicability of WCAG 2.0 to content displayed on mobile devices.
WAI Interest Group: Send deliverables for review.
Web Platform Working Group: Send deliverables for review.

External Organizations

U.S. Access Board: Review of specification
European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI): Review of specification
European Committee for Standardization (CEN): Review of specification
European Commission: Review of specification
RERC for the Advancement of Cognitive Technologies: Review of specification
RERC on Universal Interface and Information Technology Access: Review of specification
Chinese Disabled People's Federation (CDPF): Review of specification
Japanese Industry Standards Organization (JIS): Review of specification

Participation

To be successful, this Working Group is expected to have 15 or more active participants for its duration, including representatives from the key implementors of this specification, and active Editors and Test Leads for each specification. The Chairs, specification Editors, and Test Leads are expected to contribute half of a day per week towards the Working Group. There is no minimum requirement for other Participants.

The group encourages questions, comments and issues on its public mailing lists and document repositories, as described in Communication.

The group also welcomes non-Members to contribute technical submissions for consideration upon their agreement to the terms of the W3C Patent Policy.

Communication

Technical discussions for this Working Group are public: the meeting minutes from teleconference and face-to-face meetings will be archived for public review, and technical discussions and issue tracking will be conducted in a manner that can be both read and written to by the general public. Working Drafts and Editor's Drafts of specifications will be developed on a public repository, and may permit direct public contribution requests. The meetings themselves are not open to public participation, however.

Information about the group (including details about deliverables, issues, actions, status, participants, and meetings) will be available from the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group home page.

Most Working Group teleconferences will focus on discussion of particular specifications, and will be conducted on an as-needed basis.

This group primarily conducts its technical work on the public mailing list public-wcag-gl@w3.org (archive) or on GitHub issues. The public is invited to review, discuss and contribute to this work.

The group may use a Member-confidential mailing list for administrative purposes and, at the discretion of the Chairs and members of the group, for member-only discussions in special cases when a participant requests such a discussion.

Decision Policy

At charter time, the decision policy is under review within the group in order to develop a decision process that supports greater asynchronous participation and minimizes dependence on weekly teleconferences. Until completed, the Working Group decision policy is as explained in Process Document section 3.3 of the W3C Process Document.

The Working Group maintains specific procedures to establish and measure consensus and address objections in the AG Working Group Decision Policy.

Patent Policy

This Working Group operates under the W3C Patent Policy (5 February 2004 Version). To promote the widest adoption of Web standards, W3C seeks to issue Recommendations that can be implemented, according to this policy, on a Royalty-Free basis. For more information about disclosure obligations for this group, please see the W3C Patent Policy Implementation.

Licensing

This (Working|Interest) Group will use the W3C Document license for all its deliverables.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 5.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.

Charter History

The following table lists details of all changes from the initial charter, per the W3C Process Document (section 5.2.3):

Charter Period	Start Date	End Date	Changes
Initial Charter	24 September 2015	31 July 2018
Rechartered	01 November 2016	31 October 2019	Changing from publishing normative extensions for multiple topics to a consolidated WCAG 2.1 and adding new publication for Accessibility Conformance Testing Framework 1.0.